Amputation
by frooit
Summary: His knife's in that big, mean Bowie style, like a sneering half grin, like a bear claw. ::semi snafu/sledge::


**amputation**  
_the pacific, semi snafu/sledge  
by lilnee_

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His knife's in that big, mean Bowie style, like a sneering half grin, like a bear claw. It's silver-white tip to butt, catches the sun like a mirror. A comfortable hard wood grip, thin and smooth, makes the fact that it's heavier than any knife Eugene's held before a mite easier. It certainly isn't his Mother's cutlery. Even as it's in his hand, peaceful, he knows nothing good is to come of it.

Ears ringing, jaw set, his breath flows in and out, quick and sharp, like the lunge of a blade. It's gotten worse. Getting worse by the hour, and boy oh boy, does he feel the weight. Not of this nasty man killer but of what he's managed to ignore so far, and those are ugly, gnawing thoughts. It's these endless fucking Japs, this blind eye God has, the smell and heat and forever rain of this place. This _fucking_ place. Eugene's angry as hell. Outside just the shell of a boy. Inside a tossed up hive of bees. He can hardly contain it from crowding in. It's scream-your-throat-ragged strong, itching hot, such a volatile emotion. Figured he would get mad, you know, rather than _raving_ _mad, _but the two are just layers over layers these days and steps apart.

Damned either way. Living to die. _Is it today? Tomorrow? A week from now?_

He can't take not knowing.

"What're you doing?"

Eugene twitches, knife drawing upward, licking at the air. Snafu sounds leery, an undertone there like a parent takes on with a child. It's foreboding, cautioning. It's telling Eugene to _stop what you're doing_. He's already started though, sweat tickling in palms, grip a vice, and isn't feeling too sure in himself that he could stop anymore than go on. He looks it over, the exaggerated point of the knife, the razor-fine biting edge. He twists it and assesses either side. It might be comically out of place in his hands, but his face argues otherwise. Skin pallid and translucent thin, eyes hollow, lips torn and chapped, pulled over dull teeth.

A mask, really.

"G?"

Death like.

"What?" Eugene says, bit off.

"Why you doin' that?" Snafu asks, somewhat more casual now.

"Just looking."

"No kiddin'? Thought you were scratchin' your ass."

He pauses just to move closer, on the balls of his feet, continuing with, "Eyes are for lookin'."

"What's the difference?"

"Can't fire no gun with no fingers."

Snafu reaches over for his wrist, avoiding the blade, but Eugene turns away.

It's making him nervous. Eugene has enough sense to see that. He smiles just a hair. It's not a good smile. An unsettling tingle darts from his stomach up his throat, scorching all the way. He's been getting that lately, like the sensations before stomach evacuation, like the twinges before bowels loosen, like the break out sweat after a good scare. Those are feelings you never get used to, but they can be conditioned. Slowly, painfully. He works his throat into a dry swallow and sets the blade across his knee, appeasing little, handle remaining stuck to the inside of his hand. Not absolutely alive unless you're reminded after all, and Eugene has been prone to forget.

Snafu monitors him from at his left flank, eyes luminescent and feline wide in the semi-light. It's a sideways glance like all the ones he never thinks Eugene sees, covert yet bare naked. He forgets his reputation around him, lets that confused jab at civility and humanity and some kind of muddled appreciation just melt right on through. Comes out in waves, never ebbing, receding, always crashing and colliding. Eugene finds that he suffocates under it (and that's just another layer). He sucks up air through his nose, instant, as if pinched, and then lets it go from his mouth, slowly.

_Pace yourself._

"Ever use one o' those?"

Snafu's making the conversation light.

Trying to.

He lets himself down from the balls of his feet and sinks in next to Eugene. Shoulders rub, hips knock, just the tiniest bit of friction, tiniest hint of a spark. It's all too evident in Snafu's candid expression. Eugene shifts, fingers flex, that blade handle good company. Everyone of his teeth he has stamped down, causing a pressure, a pain (that scorching, unsettling tingle jumps, jostles) in his jaw, in his throat. What this feels like: compare it to acid burn, compare it to boiling waters, compare it to hot, glowing coals.

See also: agony.

"No," Eugene says after a time.

Snafu goes for him again, but this time he's out for the knife, for Eugene's right hand, not his wrist. He's quick as a shot, reaching across Eugene's narrow chest, elbow jabbing breastbone, keeping him at a distance. He finds his hand in one grab and squeezes it, grinding every bone within, willing Eugene to drop it, _just drop it_. Teeth compressed, lips curling, Eugene sneers at him, rears away. He doesn't let go and neither does Snafu. He comes with the motion, forced to his knees, the floor.

It's probably a miracle. Someone watching out for them, God aware after all.

Eugene's fingers pop open. The Bowie lands at his boot tip, Snafu's knees.

It was close.

So very close.

Eugene's heart thumps hard, solid, blood gone thick. What could have happened was enough to stop him.

The knife, dormant on the floor, just a promise, winks in the waning light.

He can see it clearly, like so many horror scenes played out before it. The knife would have entered below Snafu's clavicle and pushed its way up and in, savory easy, disregarding tissue and muscle, chipping bone. The blade wedging to the finger guard, red spray from a severed subclavian artery slicking it down. Snafu would recoil and liquefy, going to the ground, both hands clawed, arms coiling. Maybe he would thrash, knee-locked, and try to cry out. He would most certainly have bled dry in seconds. Not a doubt or fading shred of hope there. His formerly beautiful eyes wide and terrible, as blank as his supposed eternal soul, as blank as his lingering past. Mouth agape, face pale, scarlet splash standing out, steaming in the chilled atmosphere. Stuck in a far away place, straw and ash from the home's floor, the one they'd crowded into to stay out the weather, spotting and smudging the faded and threadbare olive of his uniform. And that red—all that vibrant, thick red of this scenario—stained on his hands, on his skin, on his throat.

It's the only colour at all.

"Good boy."

Snafu's got Eugene's hand in his, fingers icy.

"I coulda killed you," Eugene admits. Isn't quite sure how it sounded, but he hopes for angry, rather than how he feels.

Terrified.

Snafu scoffs, as if the idea of some Alabama boy harming him was absurd. Eugene gains his hand back, just a quick jerk, and shoves him away. Because of his still crouched state Snafu topples easily, arms flailing for support but not catching. Eugene's in his face in a breath, that furnace relit, leaning over so all Snafu can see is him and his teeth.

"I could have killed you. Not some fucking blood thirsty Jap, _me_."

He nods to a body in the corner they hadn't acknowledged until now, blanketed in rubble.

Just another looming sign of ill omen.

"Yeah, no shit," Snafu agrees, ignoring it. "Ain't my problem though, _sweetness_."

His stale breath an emphasis on that last word. He has to come in close to waft it across Eugene's cheek.

"Sin'd be on your pretty lil' head."

Eugene moves away, hands empty now but filthy with days of muck.

His face is sterile.

Snafu eyes him, uncertain.

"Losin' your shit, Eugene," he says.

Eugene rubs his hands on his trousers, not removing much.

"Don't call me that," he warns, the tone as empty as he feels.

He retrieves his knife, returning it to its leather case. It clicks as it slides home.

"What ya gonna do if I don't," Snafu starts, sitting upright, eyes so very clouded in the darkness.

"Kill me?"

Eugene looks at him. His unkind, flaunting smile just a line of muted white.

Night is falling. He can hardly see him.

"That's what you want, isn't?" Eugene tries, voice becoming steady and turning heated. "To die? Just give up and check out? Leave us all behind? That's pathetic. No better than—"

"'Least it's not gonna be my hands doin' it."

Eugene balks, his knife flittering to mind and then gone.

Snafu's head tilts.

He had been thinking about it, hadn't he?

These long, hard days won't pass without the thought, so engrained it doesn't trip warning signs anymore. It's there on everyone's face sure enough, as they sit long hours in the embracing stench of the enemy's long dead. It's oozing even, out of every pore. A scent on these scared little boys, like the stench of death. Not the experienced crew though. No, not for them. They've learned to accept it, turned it old hat, a thing of certain and promise, their time all the more valuable. That's where Snafu alters. He's waiting for it in anticipation. It's not out of his mind, it's present, comfortable. He's been with the idea so long, romancing, idealizing, that death is his next big scene. How many sharp remarks would he have left for Lucifer? How many serpentine smiles?

Eugene doesn't speak, he simply fills an otherwise empty space as Snafu stands.

"Ya don't want to do that. Same as desertion."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Eugene doesn't like how he sounds to his own ear. Simpering as a girl.

A cigarette is produced, picked from a pack kept safe in a breast pocket. Snafu's face glows orange at the lighting of it, cheekbones and eye sockets hollowed out, lips and jaw shaded, defined. He shoots a quick look up at Eugene, too quick to just be one of those long suffering dazes, and drops his lighter. It falls open, rebounding in a twirl. It doesn't extinguish. That bit of motion is enough to reign over Eugene. His attention and sense tuned to that point in just that moment, at just that wrong time, enough for the Japanese soldier to grab him from behind and slide a comparably large blade across his fleshy throat, quick as a shot.

"He—"

Snafu was moving as the soldier moved, lunging in with a knife Eugene hadn't known he'd pulled, subdued zippo light screaming yellow off the polished edges. Moments, snap shots, slow blinks, Snafu collides with the two of them, full weight going through Eugene, blade passing freely under his armpit and right into Japanese rib cage. It's a terrible scream and seconds really from point of surprise to point of knife dropping. Eugene staggers aside. The soldier gurgles and chokes, blood dribbling through parted teeth. He gibbers and shakes. Snafu comes at him again, bloodied Bowie taking another bite into flesh, catching him in the gut.

He doesn't scream this time, he jumps, face all too aware of what was happening. Snafu growls at him, guttural, almost lost in the roll of thunder from the livid sky above. Eugene steps further away, dizzied, warmth drawing down his throat. He feels for it, bothered, thinking it's sweat. His hand mops up red. A parting bite from enemy steel. Oh, and he's sure he's got his secret wish then. He sinks to his knees, missing Snafu following the soldier down to the ground, using the Bowie as leverage, present as his eyes glaze and the life leaves him.

Eugene's vision swims.

"Here, here, let me see, let me fuckin' _see_."

What was probably seconds passing in real time was unbearably long, days long, to Eugene. But Snafu returns to him. He tries easing his clenched fingers from his jugular, but can't find the grip, can't get purchase on that slippery skin. He's fumbling, cursing, face stressed. He appears all too human, all too real. Eugene watches as if from a great distance.

"Let go, God dammit!"

Eugene relaxes and Snafu snatches the hand away.

"Jesus."

Uneasy resolve brewing.

"You're okay."

Snafu brings him close, crushing him in an embrace. Ignores that Eugene's bleeding on him or that a body is to their side, already starting to kick up a smell. He just keeps that connection, arms locked. Eugene sighs, lengthy, tired tears threatening.

Snafu repeats, "You're okay."

Voice deepened, raw.

He keeps Eugene near, nosing his temple, taking a deep breath in, overwhelmed. He touches Eugene's face and his arms, his shoulders, his torso, like some kind of ancient ritual. His movements subtle and strangely restricted. He's filing it all away for later use. How Eugene's hair feels and smells; how his skin stretches and pulls; how his pulse thump-thuds under his fingers and palms, and that radiant, living heat too. All for another time, because Snafu isn't confident in the next opportunity he'll have. Not now. Eugene retains his want to lose it as Snafu's doing this, trying his damndest to be comforted, to let go. He's afraid though, if he does let go is there coming back?

"Be damned if ya die before me."

The zippo gutters and goes out.

They're left to darkness.


End file.
